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Living Room Art (LRA) Catalogues

VBB’s living room art (LRA) catalogues allow local and inter/national audiences to re-experience our productions and further engage with the issues we explore. Each catalogue features photography and links to videos from actual events along with additional commissioned essays from artists and scholars involved in the productions.

Co-editor Dr. Maria Gonzalez notes in her introduction that Borderlines: Volume Two, renders, vividly and from a range of positions, the experiecnes of stateless workers and communities upon whose labor virtually every country depends, but who are without official status or civil protections in the countries where they live and work. These pieces are explosive in nature, emotional by definition, and powerful in their words and images as they explore the conditions that relegate many boundary crossers to perpetual vulnerability and exploitation in nations unwilling to acknowledge those who work, live and die within their borders.

As co-editor Dr. Margot Backus notes in her foreward, the pieces in Borderlines: Volume One share a common focus on things that went wrong for certain groups when a new border was imposed and sensitively describe what happens to cultural, national, or linguistic identities that a new border stigmatizes, garbles, or renders untenable. The authors and artists employ an array of strategies to re-assert or reinvent cultural identities disrupted by politically expedient but socially disruptive borderlines, Their inventive re-conceptions of self, culture and community offer valuable inspiration to keep seeking ways to listen and exchange ideas across borders, and to co-create new, border-disruptive expressions, spaces and collectives.

Homes and Histories further expands VBB's Fall 2012/Spring 2013 living room art production, which was held on the streets of Freedmen's Town, Houston with digital links to Lyari, Karachi (Pakistan) as well as to villages outside of Karachi. Freedmen's Town was founded and built by enslaved peoples immediately after Emancipation in the 1860s, while Lyari is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Karachi and home to a large Baloch community whose roots are in east Africa. The catalogue features essayists who explore issues related to both communities; academics who discuss the history of Freedmen's Town and the African diaspora; and writings by curators involved in VBB's production. The publication also includes interviews with Freedmen’s Town residents: Jackie Beckham, Lenwood Johnson, and Edward Braziel; and with members of Pakistan’s black Diaspora: Akbar Baloch, Rafique Baloch, Iqbal Hyder, Gul Mohammad, and Pir Buksh.
Contributors:Anne S. Chao, Stephen Fox, Haris Gazdar, Aslam Khwaja, Kairn Klieman, Babette Niemel, Sehba Sarwar, Michael Woodson; and interviews with Robert Pruitt by Autumn Knight, with Lenwood Johnson by Gordon Anderson, and with Jackie Beckham and Edward Braziel by Sehba Sarwar.

Women Under Siege revisits our Spring 2012 productions, which explored women's health, education, and "security" issues in Houston and Karachi, Pakistan. By juxtaposing freedoms in Houston and Karachi that are often taken for granted, artists from both cities transformed a residential Houston home through installations, visual art, and performances. The catalogue features essayists who are actively working towards women’s rights in Houston and Karachi; poets who grapple with their own struggle for equality; writings by curators involved in the production; and interviews with Miriam Kass + Melaney Linton, two pro-choice pioneers in Houston, Texas.